


The Glowing Man

by prrincessyue



Category: Lunar Chronicles - Marissa Meyer
Genre: Character Study, Gen, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-05
Updated: 2017-08-05
Packaged: 2018-12-11 02:11:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,543
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11704644
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prrincessyue/pseuds/prrincessyue
Summary: Princess Winter Hayle-Blackburn has to sit through yet another execution in the Throne Room, but this one's a bit different than usual.





	The Glowing Man

The man came in angry. Not horrified, not sobbing, not deranged.

Maybe deranged.

Deranged to someone who couldn't possibly think someone would walk into that room _angry_ rather than deranged - but still not deranged, at least not to winter.

What did that word mean, anyway? - crazed, dishelved, _desperate._

The man entered the throne room, for his trial amongst the queen in which he would surely be executed, and he was non of these things but instead he was angry.

And he had every right to be.

Winter tensed, thinking just how quickly that determination, passion, that _will to live_ , would be squashed. Levana would suck the fire right out of him without even killing him, and then she would kill him anyway.

Winter could see it, literally. The man's hair caught fire so suddenly she didn't even have the chance to stifle her gasp. Levana peered down at her, annoyed, but she couldn't pry her eyes away from the man and his glowing hair - the glowing man. The light haloed around his head, illuminating his face. For a moment it was quite beautiful, but just as she was recognizing this something dark snaked it's way in.

Glamour often took this form in Winter's hallucinations - a thick, sludgy black rope suspended in the air. In this case it floated its way over to the man and coiled around his hair, the fire. It continued to close in, stifling until the fire was extinguished.

And then it kept going.

All the way around the man, squeezing in, suffocating, compressing.

With a jolt of panic, Winter started to feel it gathering around her as well. All she could do was squeeze the arms of her throne to keep from clawing out at it, even as every part of her body was sore from the pressure of it, her insides slowly oozing out because of this god forsaken rope.

It was an awful sight, but where else could she look?

The man crumpled into a pile of paper, the rope having gone too far at that point. Winter squeezed her eyes shut, no longer caring about Levana's glare, and willed the hallucination to subside before she could suffer the same fate. After all, it was just a hallucination; she knew that. Even still, she longed for Jacin. She had never been good at doing this alone.

_It isn't real, it isn't real._

When she opened her eyes, the man was standing again, ablaze only with hatred. All that was left of Winter's vision were her fingers gripping her throne, knuckles white.

She sucked in a breath, counted to five, let it go. Swallowed. And then, even though she hated herself for it, she smiled. It was her most charming smile and it was meant to calm the man down, though Winter just felt like she was controlling him.

The last smile he saw would be trying to silence him.

She tried to take a small comfort in the fact that at least she would be helping him go in peace, but it was no good; this was exactly what she had never wanted. Stars, that was the whole reason she had her hallucinations, was so familiar with them, in the first place. So instead, Winter noticed that she couldn't catch his eye, and she knew that something so materialistic wouldn't work on him - she breathed a sigh of relief.

"Your Majesty?" She turned to the piercing gaze of her stepmom, "Just before this trial starts, could I send for some sour apple petites? I'd hate to interrupt."

She needed to distract herself.

With one quick, sharp look full of distaste and hatred, the Queen of Luna hissed, "Ofcourse, _dear_." She nodded at a servant, who scurried off to fetch them.

This time Winter's smile was genuine. This morning had been downright _awful_ so far, but - oh, how she loved those delectable little candies, full of sweetness.

And then she felt bad again, for thinking like that when a man's life was on the line. Ofcourse she did. Still, she straightened her spine and studied her hands in her lap, refusing to look at him. His image was already ingrained in her head, anyway, as all of the queen's victim's faces were - they often came back to haunt her in her dreams. This man had a solid build and was probably in his mid forties. He was scraggly, with a mop of black hair and stubble all over his face, worry lines etched into his forehead, and dirty clothes. And he was _not_ deranged, although he seemed to be coming closer and closer to it by the second.

Winter couldn't help but glance back up at the poor man before seeing the look in his eyes and wincing, immediately dropping her own. If he wasn't desperate before, he certainly was now.

But the thing was, she simply couldn't do anything about it. It killed her, it always did, but it was the truth. Best to just look away, pretend she didn't notice. Right?

She felt the man staring at her.

"Any last words?" Levana's cool voice cooed.

Up until then the man had only been staring with intent disgust, but now he finally spoke, "So you're going to let me speak? Give me the _freedom_ , the luxury?"

He spat it out, as if addressing the queen, or anyone in the room for that matter, was the most horrendous thing he could possibly do.

Levana just sighed, unamused, and replied dryly, "Is that all?"

But his attention had been drawn away and he was no longer looking at her impossibly perfect face, with its sharp, glamor crafted features. Now his strangely calm eyes were caught on a servant who was timidly re-entering the room with a delicate tray of sour apple petites.

Winter's treats.

One beat, two beats, and then the calm before the storm was over.

His head snapped away from the trembling servant jerkily, as if he could hardly control it, and his hungry eyes focused on Winter's ethereally beautiful face, her features untouched by glamour.

"And you!" he accused, his voice ragged and raspy but booming.

As his voice echoed off the palace walls, it was like a bomb had gone off. Winter's head shot up, surprised, but she held his gaze as he screamed at her, not letting herself coward away. She would show him dignity, and respect.

"You just- you just sit there on your little thrown. The people love you and I don't know why! You just gallivant around the castle with your pretty little face, but you offer us no hope! You don't do _anything_! You're useless, you're never even gonna be queen. You're not doing anything to help your people survive her reign, and you're not going to help us in the aftermath!"

Winter's insides were churning all over the place and she felt like the man was lunging at her, coming in too close and suffocating just like the faux glamour from earlier, even though he was really being held firmly in place. She didn't know what to do, what to say - no one had ever done anything like this before.

She couldn't possibly tell him that she was sorry, that she didn't know how to fix this but wished she did everyday, because that wasn't enough; and she couldn't possibly touch her scar and remind him that she even hadn't been free from Levana's evil cutches when so many people were shown much less mercy everyday.

Because she had nothing to say, she just stared back at him. Unflinching, unaffected.

She had no strength, after all. She was just the crazy little princess who amused the people so much that she was adored.

Everything he was saying was true.

"You disgust me," he went on, growling now, "a man's about to die- do you even know what for? do you even know what my crime was, just how unjust this punishment is? - and you're getting your little treats, watching like it's a show. You don't even understand how we struggle because of the negligence and ignorance that you have the privilege of owning."

_You don't even understand how we struggle because of the negligence and ignorance that you have the privilege of owning._

_We struggle because of your unearned negligence and ignorance._

_You don't even understand how we struggle._

_negligence, ignorance;negligence, ignorance._

_Ignorance, ignorance, ignorance._

No matter how Winter's mind morphed and changed the statement, it never got any better.

With the man's voice ringing in her ears, Winter didn't dare twitch a single muscle even the slightest bit. She was playing a game, seeing how still she could hold.

She hardly heard Levana as she laughed and sang, "Oh you're derganged. I  _wish_  my dear Winter was as heartless as you make her out to be," because she was focusing on her game so much, the man's voice so loud in her head.

As the man picked up the knife against his will, she tried her hardest to keep looking, to win this game.

But ofcourse, she shut her eyes tightly before the splatter of thick blood could come, just as always.

Levana was wrong - he was the most sane person to have ever entered that room. 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!


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